DEFINITENESS IN COMMITTAL
E. O. P. Mutton
Exodus 21: 1–6; Hebrews 11: 24–26
I seek grace to say a word as to definiteness in committal. These are well known scriptures but I have an impression that the Lord would challenge each of us as to the definiteness of our committal, especially those of us here who are breaking bread. Everyone who is breaking bread has made a definite committal. Last Lord’s Day we put our hands to the loaf and the cup and that is a committal which we made. I have the impression that some of us do not realise the blessedness, and yet the solemnity, of what we do in actually partaking of the emblems. I would like to encourage us all to think more deeply about what breaking bread means. It is something physical that the Lord has given us to do. We actually put our hands to the loaf, and we drink out of the cup, and that carries with it a certain declaration; a declaration to the world, to the angels, and to our brethren that we are committed to what the Lord’s supper represents. It represents the highest thought of committal seen in the Lord Jesus Himself. Now some of us may not reflect that committal during the week that follows, and maybe we break bread very glibly. We may regard it as something that when you get to a certain age you ought to be doing, so I might as well do it too. Beloved brother or sister, we put our hands to the loaf and the cup every week and in effect say that we are committed to the death of Christ; committed to that character of devotion, “This is my body, which is for you”. We are also committed to the effects of that death and what has come out of that death as seen in the cup, “The cup of blessing which we bless” (1 Corinthians 10: 16), and we commit ourselves to the fellowship of God’s Son in so doing. That is a very great privilege. It is the most exclusive and privileged fellowship that anyone on earth could ever belong to, and it carries with it certain responsibilities. We used to hear a little more than we do now as to partnership. It involves a partnership among those who put their hands to the loaf and the cup.
We used to be told when I was young, if I do something or go somewhere which is dishonouring to the Lord, I take all the brethren with me. That is the standard of the partnership, and it is a very blessed thing. It is something that it is our privilege to enjoy, the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. If you break bread you have made that committal outwardly, and the grace of God is that He would help you to keep that committal practically. God is not saying, ‘You have committed yourself to that outwardly and if you do not keep it, there is judgment’. God is saying, ‘You have committed yourself to that outwardly, however unintelligently, and I would like you to understand the blessedness and the responsibility of what is involved in the fellowship’. I would therefore like to say a word from these two scriptures to encourage every heart. You may have had a brighter day in your soul history, maybe you can remember the first time you broke bread, remember the Lord’s Day, remember who preached in the evening, remember the old brothers putting their arms round your shoulders at the end of the gospel, and saying, ‘You have committed yourself to something that is very great’. Maybe you have fallen from that; but God has remembered it.
He said to some, ‘I remember for thee ... when thou wentest after me’ God remembers that for you and He would love to have you recovered to that level of committal. You may not have fully understood what was involved, but God will gently lead you on and He would lead you on by showing you the standard of committal that there is in the Lord Jesus Himself.
That is what we get in Exodus 21. It would have been actual, of course, for some Hebrew bondman. But it speaks to us primarily of the character of the committal that was seen in the Lord Jesus, “Shall say distinctly”. There is a lot of indistinct speaking in the world today.
There has never been a time when there was more indistinct speaking, more voices that do not really know what they are saying. I have been impressed over recent months with how much politicians say and not really commit themselves to anything. We can be like that, we can say a lot of things and actually not commit ourselves to them. But the committal of the Lord Jesus was not like that. He said distinctly, “I love”, and that is the basis of committal, love. The basis of the Lord’s committal to the will of God was love for His God, love for the assembly and love, as it says here, for His children, love for you and love for me. I am just applying this scripture as it appeals to me, and, beloved brother or sister, our committal will only be distinct if it is based on love for God and love for what is of God—love for Christ, of course, and love for the Spirit—but also love for the people of God, both in the expression of the assembly, as the Lord has given us to enjoy it, and also in our individual love for the saints. The Lord Jesus committed Himself; He said distinctly, “I love”. Now, beloved brother or sister, that is the way the Lord has committed Himself to you. We come into this on an individual basis. We have a sense in the gospel as it reaches us of the way the Lord has committed Himself to us, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Paul says (Galatians 2: 20). ‘Well’, you say, ‘that is the gospel’. I tell you, dear friend, you will never be committed if you have not been affected by the gospel; and you will not continue in committal unless you are maintained in the spirit of the gospel, because that is where we learn the character of God’s committal to us, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 John 4: 10) and God has said it distinctly. God is saying distinctly that He is going to have man in His presence eternally, and the Lord Jesus said distinctly that He was coming to do the will of God, involving His death and His burial and His bearing the judgment of God against sin that you and I might be secured. If you want to see the standard of God’s committal to you, if you want to see the standard of the committal of the Lord Jesus to you, dear friend, you need to take a look at the cross, you need to take a look at what happened there, to see the great work that was undertaken, the committal of God in love to you and to me. But this scripture presents it from the Lord’s side, “I love my master”. You contemplate what the Lord Jesus loved, loving His God, “Lo, I come to do, O God, thy will” (Hebrews 10: 7), committing Himself to the great realm of blessing that is going to be for God eternally; to securing the universe in accord with the pleasure of God. What a, vast realm there is in that! Everything that God’s eye is going to rest upon eternally, secured by the Lord Jesus in the way He went and what He has done. It involved His being forsaken of God, being made sin—the very thing that kept man out of God’s presence, and the judgment against it exhausted by the Lord Jesus in those three hours of darkness on the cross. That is the standard of the committal of God, the committal of the Lord Jesus to you and to me. Christian committal must be in the light of that wonderful standard. And it has been said distinctly. How more distinctive could God have made His love? How more distinctly could the Lord Jesus have made His committal than at the cross. As you and I put our hands to the loaf and the cup tomorrow morning we are committing ourselves to being here as true to that great and eternal work, and as true to the One who effected it.
Then the Lord says, “I love … my wife”. In fact, the words, “I love” do not come in again as though it is one whole. “I love my master, my wife, and my children”. How the Lord Jesus loves His assembly! “Even as the Christ also loved the assembly, and has delivered himself up for it”, Ephesians 5: 25. The marital bond is some little picture that God has given us, in what is natural of the way the Lord Jesus is committed, to the assembly, “I love my wife”.
That should be a very great preservative against any thought that assembly experience is not possible in a day of breakdown. Without making any claim and without making any pretension, such is the Lord’s love for His assembly that it is unthinkable that as long as the Spirit is here, there is not going to be an answer, a committed answer, from a vessel that Christ has committed Himself to.
And, it says, “I love ... my children”. I think that would just bring in the individual touch. We need that sometimes, you know, in our pathways, the assurance that the Lord Jesus is still committed to us, “And behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”, Matthew 28: 20. What a committal the Lord Jesus has made, a committal to God and to the great thoughts of God, committal to the present expression of them down here, and a committal to each one of us as we go through this scene until He takes us to be with Himself.
Now that is what the Lord Jesus has done, and that is what the Lord Jesus is asking us to do, to commit ourselves distinctly. Maybe you are a secret disciple, maybe you are a lax disciple, a backslider, but God would encourage you by this word to commit yourself in this character of dedication—say distinctly! If you actually break bread, you have done it outwardly, and it is a very sad thing if you are doing it outwardly and are not exercised to be consistent with, that standard of committal. That would challenge every one of us as to whether right through the week we are in keeping with what we do at the Supper. It is the most important, thing we do in the week. There is nothing more important, no more important appointment, no more important matter than the Lord’s supper. We ought to be prepared for it, we ought to be there in exercise, and we ought to get the gain of it as we proceed through the week.
Now the Lord Jesus would encourage us to make this kind of committal. That is why I read in Hebrews. We get a picture there of a man who made distinct committals. He had to leave certain things, he had to choose certain things and he finished up by having respect for certain things. God would bring you into a system of blessing, things that are worth going in for. Your committal to the Lord’s supper and the things of God is not a negative matter; it is a positive matter, and the more positive you are about the things of God, the less important will seem other things that loom so large, especially when we are young. The bondman in Exodus 21 had to leave everything, he could not go out free, and, beloved brother or sister, as you commit yourself to the Lord, in effect you are saying you are not going to have your part in what is dishonouring to Him in any shape or form. And the bondman could not go back. He had one opportunity and he had to make his decision. He made his decision, he could not go: out free. Now, I am sure that the majority, if not all of us in this room, have made that kind of committal, and God would encourage us to keep to it, to be committed to the Lord, to be committed to the expression of the assembly locally where we are, and to be committed to one another. Well, you say, there are plenty of brethren in my locality, I do not need to do that. There are plenty of others that are committed. Thank God for that, but the Lord wants everybody committed. The Lord does not want persons that are sitting by the window-sill and are going to fall out like Eutychus did. The Lord wants persons who are committed. You say, it is not a very attractive path outwardly; I thought I could carve myself out a nice place in the world, have a nice career and get on in the world. Beloved brother or sister, we need to sit down and think of the things that really matter. Again in the gospel we do that. We say to persons, this is a question between heaven and hell, between an eternity with Christ or an eternity lost, and as far as the testimony is concerned, the alternative is between being fully committed to the things of God, and to finding your part and place in a world that has rejected Christ and is dishonouring Him at the present time.
These are the things that really matter, committal to Christ and the enjoyment of Christian fellowship; these are connected with the things that are going through. There is what is going to appear in eternity, while other things will not. However high you get up in the world, you can never take anything of this world with you. It has been well said, ‘the higher you get in this world, the nearer you get to the god of it and the more difficult you will find it. There are many of us here who can speak from some little experience that the more you get on in the world and promoted in your job, the more difficult it is to remain true to the committal that we make every Lord’s Day at the Supper. None of us find these things easy, especially when we are young, but sometimes when we are older, what is worldly has not quite so much a hold on us (although we have to be careful in thinking that we have got beyond that), but what is earthly may have increasingly a hold on us as we get more of this world’s goods. The enemy is very, very clever at using what is material to keep us locked to the earth and unavailable for full committal.
So, in Hebrews, it says of Moses first, “when he had become great, refused”. That is the first step, refusal of the line that is going to lead me away from Christ, and we need to be distinct. If in doubt, refuse it. My grandfather said that to me. When I asked him about a certain thing, was it all right to do it, he said, ‘If in doubt, do not do it’. Let us encourage one another that if we are going to be committed to the things of God, with the great realm of blessing that God wants us to enter into, we are going to have to refuse the line of things that is never going to help us. If you try to mix what is of God and what is of the world, you will be the loser. You cannot say, I will have half of one and half of the other, you will lose the good of both. It is not a question of being able to divide your life in half, and say that is for God and that is for the world. No, you will find in your experience that the world will get everything. And then Moses chose. That is the second step, you need to choose and, if you are breaking bread, in a certain sense you have chosen. You have chosen to throw in your lot with the people of God, an outwardly poor little company of persons, and maybe in your locality only just a few.
What a day of breakdown and failure it is, and yet the loaf and the cup are there every Lord’s Day. God has never had to change anything, and as you come to the Supper, what do see? A whole loaf, a witness to the total committal of Christ to God and to the will of God. You see a whole loaf, showing that God has never given up on the thought of what He is going to secure, one glorious whole. You see the cup, a cup that for the Lord was a cup of sorrow, but for us is a cup of blessing. The Lord would challenge us as to whether we are prepared to choose the things that are so great and things that really matter.
And finally, Moses came to “esteeming the reproach of the Christ ...”. I do not know whether I have reached there yet, esteeming things but, dear young brethren, let me say this to you, I think I am beginning to see that as you go in for the things of God, they become increasingly precious to you. If you stand on the outside, and do not taste and see that the Lord is good, you may well be in the position of trying to refuse certain things without anything to fill your heart, and the enemy loves that. He would love you to renounce everything here, and yet not to fully commit yourself, and just have a vacuum which he can then fill, and the last state, as the Lord said, would be worse than the first. What the Lord Jesus would like to do is to fill your heart with Himself that you might see and enjoy the reality and the preciousness of the world that He fills. Another Man in another world—One that you will increasingly want to be committed to—the Man who has given His all for you.
Now, practically the Lord has much that He would like you to be committed to. It is not a nominal committal to the Supper and that is the end of it. No, God has here that which is very precious to Him. The Lord Jesus would love you to commit yourself to the local expression of what is here for His, pleasure. You see, there are many in Christendom who are committed to the Lord, and their faithfulness puts us shame. I spent some years working side by side with such persons in the east end of London, and the faithfulness of those men makes you feel very small, and yet they had no conception of the fact that there is something that the Lord Jesus has down here which is for His pleasure now, and which He will have eternally. Now the Lord Jesus has put you in touch with it in your locality and He would love you to be committed to that. Then there is plenty in the local meeting that the Lord has to do. We who are older ought to be concerned that we keep in touch practically with the young people. Young people need to keep near to those who are more spiritual than they are. Sometimes when we are young we would like to be committed, but we feel that if we do we will stand out among the other young people; they will think we are super-spiritual.
The Lord will be with you, young brother or sister, if you commit yourself to the Lord and to His interests in your locality and you will be surprised what an influence you will be for good among your own age group. I think sometimes that the young people are just waiting for someone in their own age group to have the courage to say, ‘I am going to commit myself to the Lord, I am going to be here for His pleasure’ and go on and do it. I think you will be surprised as to how many will rally to that kind of call. Christian fellowship is a wonderful thing. Not just the social side; we enjoy the company of the saints, we enjoy being in the households of the saints; that is good and we need to keep it up, but there is something deeper than that, our spiritual links together in the common appreciation that we have of Christ and what is precious to His heart, and the Lord wants us committed to that.
Then we are to be committed to one another on an individual level, ‘If thy brother grow poor beside thee’ comes into the Old Testament scripture (see Leviticus 25: 39). Maybe you can encourage a saint old or young. No one else may see it. Some of us become obsessed with what is outward in service, but I am convinced that, like the iceberg, nine-tenths of service no one ever sees except the Lord. Maybe you just went to see an old sister for five minutes and the Lord would say, ‘I valued that’. “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me”, Matthew 25: 40. That is the kind of value we should have as we commit ourselves. The Lord has something for us to do. It may be the support of what He has in your locality, and as doing it for the Lord you will find rich recompense in your soul. But above all, beloved brethren, can I leave this word with all of us, let us say these things distinctly and the Lord will help us. If you make a committal in genuineness of exercise before God, feeling ever so weak, the Lord will keep you to that, and He will bring you to the recompense.
Let all of us bear in mind that we will commit ourselves, if the Lord leaves us here, tomorrow morning, by putting our hands to the loaf and the cup. Unless you actually stop breaking bread (and I am not encouraging anyone to do that), you have outwardly committed yourself.
He is not telling anyone to stop breaking bread because they do not feel able for it. Do not stop making the committal. How gracious the Lord is that we do it every week. The Lord is not saying once a year, and then wait for a year before that exercise comes round again. No, at the beginning of every week the Lord recalls us to the standard of committal seen in Himself, and appeals to us in the emblems to follow suit and say distinctly, “I love my master, my wife, and my children, .I will not go free”. May the Lord help us all. For His name’s sake.
Address at Kirkcaldy
10 November 1990